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PROJECT 1: The Problematic Moment Approach
Paper presentation for 2000 ISPSO Symposium
James Cumming and Evangelina Holvino
DRAFT 5/15/00
USING THE PROBLEMATIC MOMENT APPROACH TO ACCESS REPRESSED DISCOURSES AND EMOTIONS IN GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS
ABSTRACT
A problematic moment is a moment, typically a moment of silence, experienced by a group that marks a disruption to a
particular discourse of values, beliefs, assumptions, and affect being constructed by the group. The theory of problematic moments draws on the work of:
- Fairclough, who brought together language analysis and social theory by combining the social-theoretical approach of discourse with the text-and-interaction approach of linguistically oriented discourse analysis;
- Holvino, who has integrated theories of group dynamics from the Tavistock and National Training Laboratories (T-group) traditions; and
- Billig, a discursive psychologist, who has reformulated the idea of repression to show how it depends on the skills of language.
The Problematic Moment Approach helps access the unspoken and silenced discourses and emotions that conscious and
unconscious power dynamics may
repress in a group and an organization. The Approach was used to track the discourse of a two-day conference on issues of gender. Three moments that occurred during the conference were identified as problematic. A videotape of those moments, which we will show in our presentation, was played back to conference organizers who identified dominant and repressed conference discourses.
Further analysis identified four unspoken norms operating during the conference. Each problematic moment helps show how
the rhetorical device of replacement helped to repress the emotions that arose in conference participants when there was transgression of those norms.
Paper presentation for 2000 ISPSO Symposium
James Cumming and Evangelina Holvino
DRAFT 5/15/00
USING THE PROBLEMATIC MOMENT APPROACH TO ACCESS REPRESSED DISCOURSES AND EMOTIONS IN GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS
In fact, my whole outlook on social life is determined by
this question. How can we recognize the shackles that traditions have laid upon us? For when we recognize them, we are also able to break them.
Boas
Introduction to the Problematic Moment Approach
A problematic moment is a moment, typically a moment of silence, experienced by a group that marks a disruption to a particular discourse
of values, beliefs, assumptions, and affect being constructed by the group. Individual group members may not appreciate the significance of the moment as it happens. However, at a later date a videotape of those
moments can be played back that enables participants to reflect in tranquility on the meaning of the moments and to generate hypotheses about the nature of the values, beliefs, and assumptions being
contested. At another level, it also allows participants to re-evaluate habitual responses, particularly emotional ones, that may be triggered at such key moments.
The value of the problematic moment approach is that it allows access to the unspoken and silenced discourses and emotions that conscious
and unconscious power dynamics may repress in a group. In other words, the approach gives members of a group the opportunity to see what the dominant discourse may have accomplished by the repression
of alternative discourses in an organization, perhaps seemingly through processes of "rational" dialogue. Organizational members also have the
possibility of learning how some ways of thinking about; talking about; and accomplishing the organizational tasks get more attention than others.
Applying the Approach
The authors of this paper were asked by a Graduate School of Management (GSM) in the USA to use the Problematic Moment
Approach to track the discourse of a two-day conference held in June 1999 for about one hundred people, most of them white, US American women. The aim of the conference, Gender at Work: Beyond white,
western, middle-class, heterosexual professional women, was:
To structure a dialogue through which participants can
surface and "unpack" assumptions about gender in organizations that implicitly or explicitly are based on the norm of white, western, middle class, heterosexual, professional women.
A team of three conference participants was briefed to note the time when problematic moments occurred in the conference. From this data,
three moments that occurred during the two conference days were identified as problematic. The videotape of the conference was edited to produce a videotape just containing these particular moments. The
edited tape was played back to a meeting of members of the GSM who had participated in the conference for analysis and discussion. For the
rest of this paper I will refer to this group of people as "the Group." As a result of their analysis, the Group identified concrete ways to ensure that
repressed discourses, emotions, and identities are more present in future conferences.
The dominant and repressed discourses identified by the Group for each problematic moment are outlined in table form below. After that, a
detailed analysis of one of those problematic moments done by the Group is presented. Then we present the theory of the Problematic Moment Approach, which has particular relevance to emotions in
organizations, and use it to revisit the problematic moment analyzed in depth.
Overview of the dominant and repressed discourse in the conference Problematic Moment #1: A moment of complicity
This problematic moment occurred when the white female South African
panelist had run out of her allotted presentation time. In the moment, she tries to negotiate with the leader of her panel, a colored South African,
and the audience for extra time to show a slide. The audience supports her in opposition to the leader of the panel in gaining more time for her
presentation. Possible dominant and repressed discourses at play here are outlined in the table.
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Dominant discourses
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Repressed discourses
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Idealization of black South African women by the white female South African panelist.
Negotiation over
time between white South African woman and a colored South African woman "interrupted" by the audience of mainly white US women. Their "whiteness" enables the white South African woman to gain more time to talk.
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The fear of the power of black women in the lives of white South African women.
Visceral responses
of disapproval by the audience to the story of the white South African's "black maid". White US American women not owning their fear.
Complicity between white women, black men, and women of color to challenge a woman of color's leadership.
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Problematic Moment #2: A moment when anguish was avoided
This problematic moment occurred when an Indian woman in the audience is the first to speak in an open discussion time after the panel
and the discussants have presented. She takes up a theme of the pain and anguish that is always involved in social change - a theme that
develops from the content of the South African panel and a female Indian discussant. There is a long silence after she speaks. The topic of
conversation moves to an announcement about an economist's website.
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Dominant discourses
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Repressed discourses
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Academic discourse re-asserts itself.
Move into a discourse of economics.
"Language" of analysis and outside observer.
Context of "American soil" and business school re-established.
Unacknowledged pain of white lesbian women competes with the pain of "others".
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Personal feelings of anguish not responded to by the audience.
Connection between women from the South (India and South Africa) stopped.
First person "language"
of personal experiences and joining with the experience of others not engaged.
Participants from the South become "guests".
Pain of women from the South not discussed.
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Problematic Moment #3: A moment when women of color are blatantly disappeared
This problematic moment occurred after a Latina presenter and two
discussants have talked about the "Disappearing dynamics of women of color." Immediately on opening up the discussion to the audience, the
black male discussant thanks a white female for the contribution she has made to his professional development. For the next twenty minutes
the topic of conversation is between another black male and different women in the audience on "fixed categories." Dominant discourses
Repressed discourses Black/white oppositional dynamics established (no room for the "in-betweens," such as Latinos and Asians). Academic discourse on "fixed categories".
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Dominant discourses
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Repressed discourses
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Black/white oppositional dynamics established (no room for the "in-betweens,"
such as Latinos and Asians).
Academic discourse on "fixed categories".
Theme of "change
agents" discussed. Identified as a possible theme for next year's conference. Discussion moved from the here-and-now to the future. .
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Latina presenter disappears.
Presenter says, "I want to go home."
Her presentation on how to avoid "fixed categories" has been ignored.
Discourse of protecting white women (not talking about their privilege and their oppression which is the
unarticulated pain of white women).
White women's pain avoided.
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Detailed analysis of Problematic Moment #2
Context of Problematic Moment #2
The first person you see on the videotape of Problematic Moment #2 is Aruna, an Indian working in the US, who is a discussant for a
presentation made by a panel of people from South Africa. Prior to the concluding comments she is making here, she focused primarily on the
importance of placing organizational change work in a social, political, and economic context. She asked participants to reconsider some of the
fundamental questions of race, class, and gender change work: How does the experience of organizational transformation inform the work we do as practitioners? What are the specific gendered structures in
organizations that we're trying to change, and how are they connected to race and class?
In the U.S., the split between work in organizations and family and
social life is difficult to bridge. It is also difficult to challenge the myth of the heroic individual. She reflected that, while South Africans tend to
speak about the political context of their work and to locate themselves within it, U.S. organizational change work tends to be acontextual. How,
she asked, does external context shape the deep structure of organizations? For her, the most critical question in our efforts to deconstruct race, class, and gender is "So what? Where do we go
without a social vision?" The conference now moves to a general discussion.
General Discussion
The first person to speak in the general discussion was Indira, a professor from the Indian Institute of Management:
"I'd like to make an observation. Make a personal
statement ….. The kind of, my visit to Africa, South Africa, has left an everlasting impact. Because what I experienced then took me back to what my country would have
grappled with fifty years ago. It was right there happening so it has made a very lasting impact. Listening to the papers, what came through, and I'm listening to the
themes rather than individual papers, the questions are about being, in the context of the kind of transformations, how is the societal pathos going to be addressed. And one
of them being the gender issue. Because there is a pathos, there is a sadness, behind what has happened …. There is also an anguish, that's what I heard you speak, a
sort of anguish came through of the past experience, of resentment, anger, helplessness, of one group of people and another group of people. But you are carrying this. But
there is, each citizen is carrying that anguish, whether the elite or otherwise. The hardest being there is also fear of change and there is a hope and aspiration for change.
There is also being a celebration that a whole lot of new parts are beginning to occur, a lot of new steps are being taken, but many problems remain with the present
system. And the point, which I see is the strength, is the spiritual strength that both men and women carry in this society, and how is that going to be translated into dignified
action? And these are the issues, which rang through my mind as I listened. Because with any transformation, there is a price to be paid. And how that price is going to be
opted for is a very specific issue that I address in my work. ... that if transformation is to occur in individual lives and in the organization, what choices are you going to make,
because in any choice there is going to be a price."
Her comment is followed by a silence of 10 seconds: Problematic Moment #2.
A professor from a University Department of Economics is the next to speak:
"Well this is changing the subject slightly from the last
kind of. My name's Lee …. and I teach at the University of Massachusetts and I am one of those feminist economists who would love to have a dialogue with people who study
organizations. So I just invite you to check out the website, if I can remember the address (laughter). It's the International Association for Feminist Economics the
University of Massachusetts. I was going to give you a couple of example of places where I think we can to think about things that are complimentary and contradictory
even. One was at our conference in Ottawa a week or two ago. We had some people, some were from South Africa, from Southern countries, who talked about the gender
analysis of budgets and a lot of what they had to say had to do with how do you get these into organizations, how do you get them taken seriously, how do you get the tools
you need to actually undertake that kind of analysis. So that's something that the economist can sort of say here's what you need when you get there but we're not really sure
how to get it in there to begin with and what to do with it from there. The second thing that always runs through my head was we'd talk about diversity and the value of the
companies and that sort of thing and all the theories that economists have about the proper imperatives, so we need that. Sometimes diversity serves its purposes and
sometimes the inviting groups taking advantage of things serve that purposes much more clearly than does promoting and accommodating diversity. So that's just a
general comment and I actually wanted to raise a second issue which is sort of missing from the overall discussions by what I can tell it's in the title but it has to do with
sexuality and there's no one here speaking on this but folks from South Africa, a couple of them alluded to this, it seems to me that that's a very interesting example, maybe
a counter-example of some kind, to where the Constitution also protects against discrimination against, on the basis of sexual orientation, but doesn't seem to have either the
same kind of constituency or the same sorts of applications that the interest in gender equality has and I'd be interested in hearing more from you all or from other
speakers throughout the conference on this issue."
Followed by:
"I'd like to piggyback on a couple of things that you just
said. My name is Laura ….. I'm from Catalyst and we're non-profit research and advisory services consulting agency. And with regards to the sexual orientation piece which hasn't been discussed much, we find in
organizations that it's the one thing that …"
For the rest of this session, the discussion focuses on issues of sexual
orientation and the lack of attention to that issue in the conference.
Interviews with Indira and Lee
James Cumming was one of the trackers of the conference discourse. He noted the silence described above as a possible problematic moment
and was able to interview the two key people involved immediately after the session:
Indira: "I felt I had gone too deep too fast, because I went
into the feeling tonality of the world and I think the feelings are not necessarily really much a part of living reality here."
James: "What in this context here?"
Indira: "No this context definitely has a lot of emotions and experiences because we are dealing with a topic that has this. But talking about that personal anguish somehow it
seemed difficult in the Western context. So when it came abruptly, for a while I thought maybe I did not connect, but then I felt I was so into it and the way I work in my country
this is so real and people talk about the deprivations and the discriminations and the helplessness. It evoked a lot of similarity of responses so I stated that."
James: "Did you feel that the next person changed the topic?"
Indira: "Yeah, I did. It also created anxiety when you talk of this. At least I know it does."
James: "Did you feel then that there was anxiety created in the room at that moment?"
Indira: "I felt that people did not ex…, that there was a
hushed silence and a very quick change of topic. So I thought it was more avoidance. That's what I thought."
James' interview with Lee immediately after the session
James: "I thought there was a change in the topic." Lee:
"Oh there was definitely a change in the topic."
James: "Now what was going on for you at that moment?"
Lee: "At that particular moment?"
James: "Yes."
Lee: "Umm, well I had been thinking about raising this issue for a while and so I wanted to, and I paused to see if anyone else was going to say something that was more
directly responsive to her and when no one did, no one raised their hand at all, then I said, well o.k."
Analysis of Problematic Moments by GSM members
The GSM conference planners spent an afternoon viewing and discussing the videotape of the three Problematic Moments. Below is a
summary of some of the key themes that the Group identified for Problematic Moment #2.
The Group thought that Indira was asking a very hard question and that conference members did not know how to engage with her. Her
statement was followed by an uncomfortable silence, which was not acknowledged. Rather the conference moved to "academic intellectualizing," which the Group identified as a typical pattern of their
interaction style in the GSM.
One member of the Group said the South African panel had complained to her that they had not been connected with in the conference and that
participants had not learned from their experience. There was speculation that as the South African panel was followed by the Indian discussant Aruna, who was then followed by another Indian woman
Indira, and that a really powerfully South-South connection had been established in the room. This connection was immediately pushed to the
margins by the turn to issues of economics. One member of the Group remembered thinking during the conference that as the event took place
on "American soil," so maybe this was an appropriate turn in the conversation.
It was pointed out that Indira used the powerful emotional word "anguish." Her theme was about the pain that accompanies
redistribution and improving inequality in a post-colonial context. However, when someone talks about something painful others either feel
they cannot deal with that pain, or respond by saying they have their own pain too. The Group wondered how one could join with someone who is different, especially in talking about pain.
One member of the Group reported having a really strong reaction to
Indira's statement as it really struck her as being "real and the truth, and something that needed to be talked about." She remembered the
conference title and concluded that the theme of the conference was an invitation to engage in the issues that Indira had raised. So, it was
interesting how the conference participants just kept "backing off." Another Group member thought that the white South African woman had
named her pain as a white woman and that Indira had picked it up and embrace it in a very interesting way. But the pain of white women came
to mask the pain of women of color. The pain of white women is that they are not able to acknowledge both their privilege and their oppression.
The relationships that the Group was able to identify between the
dominant and repressed discourses that evolved during the period of time shown in the video extract of Problematic Moment #2 are summarized in
the box on page 3. The other two conference problematic moments were similarly discussed and summarized. The discussion concluded by
listing some ways that future conferences organized by the GSM could benefit from these ideas.
Potential application of these learnings for future GSM conferences
The Group wanted to know how to organize future events so they allow for both strong conceptual learning and for the kinds of discourses that
were repressed in this conference to be present. Some possible ideas include:
1. Assign someone the role of "Problematic Moment Tracker" who has
time allocated as part of the conference to make presentations on what discourse the conference may be repressing.
2. At the end of each day, small groups could talk about the problematic
moments that occurred during the day. The small groups with the help of facilitators analyze these moments. The facilitators meet to share
learnings from all the moments and then give feedback in a plenary.
3. Develop a public process for studying problematic moments as part of the agenda of the conference to help identify and be aware of the
dominant discourse and its effect on alternative discourses.
But how was repression accomplished?
The Group has constructed sets of interesting and sophisticated interpretations about which discourses were dominant and which were
repressed in the conference. However, little has been said about how that was accomplished in the conference setting and what was the role
of emotions in accomplishing repression. In order to say something about that, we need to turn to the theory underlying the problematic moment approach.
The Dialogic Unconscious
The theory of problematic moments draws on the work of Norman Fairclough who brought together language analysis and social theory by
combining the social-theoretical approach of discourse with the text-and-interaction approach of linguistically oriented discourse analysis
(Fairclough, 1992). It is to him that we owe the term "problematic moment" and the idea of focusing analysis on small segments of text.
Cumming has applied this theory in the context of the small group where the idea of a problematic moment has come to take on a psychoanalytic
dimension drawn from the Tavistock tradition (Cumming, 1997). Holvino's work on integrating theories of group dynamics from the Tavistock and
NTL traditions has helped us work the interactional as well as the unconscious levels of group dynamics (Holvino, 2000). And, Michael Billig's work in the field of discursive psychology has helped us to
conceptualize the idea of the unconscious as dialogic (Billig, 1999). He had reformulated the idea of repression to show how it depends on the
skills of language. For the purposes of this paper, we will be focusing on the idea of the dialogic unconscious to help explore emotional aspects of the problematic moments described.
The idea of the dialogic unconscious is that we use rhetoric to censor the streams of our internal dialogue in the same way we use it to censor
the streams of our external dialogue. When we use language, we regularly push aside, or repress, topics from our thoughts. In fact, it is
essential that we do so in the production of everyday speech. Just as we have the rhetorical skills to open up matters for discussion, so we also
have the ability to close down matters discursively. Routinely, we are able to change the subject and push conversations away from difficult issues.
Changing the topic of conversation is not necessarily a sign of repression, but further signs (such as frequently avoiding a particular
topic) may suggest that the topic is uncomfortable and to be avoided. In the same way that ideologies establish themselves as the only
acceptable way to think about something, so successful repression disguises what it is doing by using the technique of replacement. Something else is usually said to cover the fact that a topic is being
avoided. When the smooth operation of replacement in conversation breaks down, an uncomfortable silence may occur indicating to all that
they are avoiding, or do not want to engage in discussion about a particular topic. At such a time, which is a problematic moment, the workings of repression may be observed, as conversation is no longer
working to distract the attention of members of a group from not talking about a particular topic.
Discursive psychology maintains that the process of thinking and repression are not individual, internal states, but rather ones that can be
observed and reflected upon in a group by listening to what is talked about, not talked about, and how certain topics are avoided. It is our
claim that there are special moments in the life of a group, which we call Problematic Moments, when the process of repression breaks down
momentarily and presents the group with the opportunity to reflect on what it is repressing. These are typically signaled by moments of silence, or its opposite, moments of din (confused noisiness) (Harlow,
et. al., 1995). Of course, participants in the group may or may not respond to this opportunity to become aware of what they are repressing and to try to bring a repressed discourse into the conversation.
Just as the process of thinking is no longer seen as individual, internal
states so too are emotions. The ability to talk about emotions means that they must be publicly observable. As children we learn how to use
the vocabulary of emotions by being told how our displays and reactions are to be called. And usually talk of emotions concerns more than a
description of an internal subjective state. It is essentially talk about social relations.
There are subtle codes of emotion, which connect all interpersonal encounters. Our judgments of the emotions of others are key to the
quality or continuation of our relationships. Depending on the context, there is a social consciousness about what feelings to show in what
circumstances. For example, the academic context of this conference sets up expectations about the social boundaries between the right and wrong thing to do and to feel. Whether or not we conform to expected
emotional performance itself depends on our feelings about failure to conform. The emotions of embarrassment, shame, and guilt are central
to the organizational order (Fineman, 1993:17). In some circumstances these feelings can serve important social functions. Repression can be progressive, moral, and socially beneficial.
The case of gender discrimination can serve as an example. Before the feminist movement, men and women would unashamedly use an
outward discourse that privileged males in order to maintain a gendered social system. Feminists were aware that the institutions of discrimination on the basis of gender couldn't continue to function
without these outwardly gendered ways of talking and sought to change that. Consequently, as our awareness of gender discrimination has
increased, so our ways of talking have changed and vice versa. Ways of talking that automatically privilege men are becoming increasingly
unacceptable. However, it is not sufficient just to prohibit certain forms of public utterance. Internal controls also have to be set in place so that the
thought, as much as the outwardly spoken act, becomes shameful.
A further complication is that the conventions for the ascription of
various emotions are located in their particular cultural contexts. As there are important cultural differences in the vocabulary of emotions,
we may not be able to correctly interpret certain emotional displays if we are not familiar with the linguistic and cultural context (Billig, 1999:189).
Conventional signs of 'love' or 'anguish,' for example, may differ significantly from culture to culture. This adds a further complication to
the problems of communicating across cultures and social identities, which are highlighted in the Problematic Moments discussed in this paper.
Repressed discourses and emotions made visible in the Problematic Moments
We now revisit the three Problematic Moments to see if we can deepen our understanding of how discourses and emotions were repressed in
the conference.
Ilze, the white South African woman introduced in the description of Problematic Moment #1, was a skilful and articulate presenter. She told
a story about how she had come to reflect on the life her Black maid had lived while she was growing up, what her living conditions were like, and
how she must have hated having to serve privileged white children. In the context of South Africa, we expect that many white women would have been able to identify emotionally with her story as they probably
experienced the same situation as children. As adults in the new political context, they would be struggling with issues of guilt about the
highly privileged status they automatically took on. However, at the conference, the response of US white women to the story was very different. It was clear that many people in the room felt extremely
uncomfortable listening to this story.
When working with the Group to analyze the problematic moments we
did not clarify what that uncomfortable feeling was about. So, our ideas about the possible reasons are more speculative. Our view is that Ilze's
story transgressed at least two unspoken norms present for the conference audience:
- Members of a dominant group should not tell stories that can be seen as reasserting or reminding people of their dominance,
especially across race lines, in an audience committed to the rhetoric of meritocracy and equality.
- Members of a dominant group should not present information as factual about subordinate group members they do not know well,
especially across race lines, in an audience committed to the rhetoric of meritocracy and equality.
The feelings generated in the audience by Ilze transgressing these norms were repressed when the presenter asked for extra time from the
leader of their team (Problematic Moment #1). The largely white audience was able to join her and make it difficult for the colored leader
of the team to enforce the agreed time boundary. They may have done this to re-establish the apartheid discourse of supremacy in that moment, or to assuage the guilt generated by Ilze's story and their own
reaction to it..
We now turn to Problematic Moment #2. As we have seen, a long period of silence occurred after Indira spoke and the audience did not respond
to Indira's discourse of anguish. What unspoken norms present in the conference audience were transgressed at this point? We have identified two:
- Members of subordinate groups should speak "standard American English" at an academic conference in the US in order
to be heard. This is more than just speaking with the appropriate accent. This also means following the interactional rules governing displays of affect and other aspects of communication.
As a result of this norm, listeners do not feel obligated to do the cross-cultural work necessary to clarify meaning across social and cultural differences. Dominants can use this norm as an
excuse to disregard what subordinates are saying.
- Members of subordinate groups should not present the postcolonial discourse from the subaltern perspective in an
academic conference in the US. The subaltern cannot speak back (Spivak, 1988). In particular, a subaltern discourse cannot be allowed to emerge from the audience itself in a personalized way.
The emotions and thoughts generated in the audience by Indira's comments were repressed and replaced by talk of a website. However,
because of the silence the transition was not smoothly accomplished, there remained an uncomfortable feeling that something important had been avoided.
In her presentation before Problematic Moment #3, Aida had personalized the pain of the subordinate in a way that went beyond the
usual form of framing issues of discrimination in the US: the racial dynamics of black-white relations. Moreover she did that speaking standard US American English and using the rules of academic
discourse. Latina issues in the US are another kind of postcolonial discourse and, just as with Indira, the unspoken norm is that the subaltern cannot be allowed to speak back. Perhaps it was doubly
unacceptable that the subaltern was speaking in the language of the dominants, so that the response of the audience was to engage in a
highly academic discussion about "fixed categories" while it disappeared the presenter.
Recognizing the "shackles" that traditions have laid upon us
We have identified four of the unspoken norms, which we believe operated during the conference. We have argued that at certain times
the rhetorical device of replacement repressed the emotions that arose in conference participants when there was transgression of these unspoken
norms. It is probable that the norms identified are the norms of white, western, middle-class, and heterosexual professional women, which the
conference had attempted to go beyond. Using the Problematic Moment Approach, the Group had been able to identify dominant and repressed
discourses. However, it is only when the authors of this paper started paying attention to emotional issues that we were able to move to a
deeper level of analysis and to put names to some of the "shackles that traditions have laid upon" white academics in the US.
Another possible norm in operation at this conference is embedded in the power of academic discourse. In the English intellectual tradition,
emotions are considered irrelevant. The feelings behind a statement are supposed not to affect its truth or falsity. One is not supposed to accept
a proposition made by another just on the basis of being able to join with that person's feelings. This norm is fundamental to academic life, since
to accept propositions based solely on the grounds of the congruence of another's feelings with one's own feelings is to deny "reality" altogether.
However, in our view, a genuinely "objective" approach to learning must always be in the process of trying to become aware of its own ideology.
And, as we have seen, any transgression of ideology will lead to a strong emotional experience by a group. But, if emotions are considered
irrelevant, we then have a powerful norm that prevents people from ever gaining awareness of their ideology through coming to understand their
emotional experiences as a group. It is time to confront that academic norm.
Postscript
We would like to thank the GSM for the opportunity to do this work. The
GSM hired Chaos Management, Ltd. to undertake this study and to work with the Group to try to understand some of the repressed dynamics in
their conference so that they could improve future conferences. They placed no restrictions on making their name public. Their only
requirement was that we obtained permission from the key participants in the video clips of the Problematic Moments before showing them.
However, to avoid any possibility that the ideas presented here could in some ways be unthinkingly used as a criticism of an organization we
strongly support, we have used the acronym "GSM" instead of their real name. For anyone interested in learning more about the exciting and
innovative work on the study of gender in organizations that the GSM is undertaking, we will be pleased to provide them with contact information.
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